


believe me when i say (she got that whole place glowin')

by freesiamoonbeam



Series: The A&Dmorph!Verse [2]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Wings, Dubious Ethics, Eventual Romance, F/M, Wingfic, Wings, no religions involved in the making of this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25384285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freesiamoonbeam/pseuds/freesiamoonbeam
Summary: Aliens don't have wings.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/Donna Noble
Series: The A&Dmorph!Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1047615
Comments: 1
Kudos: 21





	believe me when i say (she got that whole place glowin')

“Humans have wings.” Donna appeared to ruminate this fact for a second, then followed it with a “but aliens don’t.”

Thump. A stray spark jumped from the console of the TARDIS into nothingness.

The Doctor’s reply was lost amidst the sparks that shot up from underneath the console. Donna nodded as if she’d actually heard the reply, and simply leant back against the jumpseat.

“How do aliens know if they’re doing something good?” Donna asked out loud.

Thump-thump. An ominous crackle.

“Thrr durr!”

“I mean, that’s going to get confusing quick, right? How can aliens figure out what to do if they don’t have something to tell them that what they’re doing is good?”

“Drrrnnrr!”

“Do they have other ways to tell then? Tails? Maybe those little things on their heads like I’ve seen on the telly—antenna or something like that?”

“DRRNRR!”

With a yelp, Donna scrambled to pull the Doctor out from underneath the console by his legs and watched in confusion and alarm as the TARDIS lights began to flicker in a disco-like fashion. There was also the distinct sound of a heavy bass thumping in time with the lights somewhere far away. Beneath her, the Doctor spat out the spanner with a strangled gasp.

“Thanks,” he managed to get out.

“What the hell was that?”

“Just working out the kinks of the— never mind that.” The Doctor stood up and gave off the appearance of shrugging without actually doing it. He then pulled out his sonic and pointed it at the console, and the disco lights faded. The thumping of a heavy bass remained though, but he seemed to dismiss that. The strange alien eyed Donna with a bright and eager look, almost like a puppy.

“You were saying something about wings?”

“Ye-es,” Donna drawled, taking her cue from the Doctor to simply ignore the thumping. “How do you Martians know what’s good?”

The Doctor seemed to shift from foot to foot, refusing to meet her eyes. “We-ell, we don’t.”

He turned to towards the console and started flipping levers, seemingly at random. Donna watched him with a kind of distracted silence, turning over his words in her mind. Wings, along with haloes and horns, are indicators of the person’s morality. A baby had no wings; wings grew with puberty. Feathered wings and a halo meant that a person was good, and as a rule they were kind and generous and considerate. Leather wings and horns were for, well, bad people; those who were rude, impolite, and generally a nuisance. Donna herself had lightly feathered wings, if only because she didn’t relish steamrolling over other people. Her halo maybe isn’t as bright as a nurse’s, but at least she took care to be more feathered than Nerys and her nearly leather wings.

A yelp. “And I’m not a Martian!”

Donna ignored him.

The TARDIS landed with that strange whirring sound, followed by an audible thump distinctive of a landing on something like concrete.

Still, Donna was lost in thought.

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Donna?”

“Hmm?”

“We’re here.”

“…oh!”

And Donna blinked back to the present. She stared at the doors with apprehension, unmoving.

The Doctor eyed her with concern, but before he could voice his doubts, Donna seemed to physically shake off her thoughts, her feathered wings spreading out in what he recognized as a “bracing” pose. The feathers would need to be straightened out, given what she had just endured earlier, but offering to do that to a human he had just met was a disaster in the making. He still remembered the embarrassment of nearly being stabbed by Leela.

“Alright then, let’s get this over with.” And with that statement, Donna marched over to the TARDIS doors.

* * *

The Doctor watched with a numb sort of horror as thousands of humans flew up on both feathered and leathery wings to escape the wrath of Vesuvius, to no avail. The ash cloud was too fast, the sulfur was too toxic, and even through the near opaque smoke, the Doctor could see winged individuals falling from exhaustion, from inhaling the toxic fumes, and from being bogged down by the heavy ashfall.

“It’s never forgotten, Caecilius.” He started, watching the nobleman’s leather wings shed the last of its pristine white feathers. His wife and children were also shedding feathers, but no horns grew on their heads; not yet. Their halos were dimming, however.

“Oh, time will pass, men'll move on, and stories will fade. But one day, Pompeii will be found again. In thousands of years. And everyone will remember you.”

It was a bleak sort of hope, and they both knew it. But the Doctor wouldn’t be the Doctor if he didn’t try to give hope. He thought of how far humanity had come and tried to inject that into his eyes as he mentally pleaded for hope to replace the dread and horror that was present in their eyes.

Donna approached Evelina and murmured something. The Doctor only caught the reply of “The visions have gone.”

“The explosion was so powerful it cracked open a rift in time, just for a second. That's what gave you the gift of prophecy. It echoed back into the Pyrovillian alternative. But not anymore. You're free.”

At his last word, Evelina’s halo brightened, as if the thought did not occur to her. Still, the Doctor eyed the few remaining feathers on the young Seer’s wings and decided not to say anything.

“But tell me.” Metella spoke, this time with an accusing edge. “Who are you, Doctor? With your words, your lack of wings, and your temple containing such size within?

The Doctor could feel Donna’s piercing stare on his back as he replied with a light “Oh, I was never here.”

He shrugged. “Don’t tell anyone.”

Afterwards, as he and Donna were safely aboard the TARDIS, Donna spoke with a hoarse voice.

“Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

That seemed like an inadequate reply to everything she taught him that day, and so he added to it.

“You were right; sometimes I need someone. Welcome aboard.”

Donna’s soft smile far outshone the bright light of her halo. Still, the Doctor can’t help but to examine her for any injuries. Her feathers were sticking out, ruffled and unkempt after being tied down as a sacrifice.

“Before we leave…do you want to…” The Doctor trailed off, gesturing at the wings of his companion.

Donna’s eyebrows shot upward. “What?”

“Er, your wings?”

Donna spared them a glance. “Oh that. I’ll clean up later.”

The Doctor looked at Donna’s battered wings and thinks of how her halo glowed when she pleaded with him to save someone.

* * *

They bound her wings.

Donna fought the urge to scream. Her WINGS! They coated her wings in some sort of futuristic fluid that hardened the joints; she can barely feel the feathers much less move a muscle. Panic had her trying to twist the handcuffs off her own wrists, desperate to remove whatever was blocking her wings’ ability to move.

“Donna, stop! Donna!”

“My wings!” she gasped out, wincing from pulling too hard on her right wrist and putting pressure on the base of her wings. In her peripheral, the Ood shifted, and the whirr of the sonic was a balm to her frazzled mind.

“Donna, wait, stop moving—”

And her wrists were free, and she hastily turned her back on the Doctor to grab at her right wing, willing it to move.

Nothing.

“Doctor—!”

“Donna, stop. You’re going to break your wing like that. Here, let me—”

And foreign hands were stretching out her right wing, lifting the massive appendage with ease. One hand gently held the wing aloft, while the other ran the sonic through the feathers, removing the numbness. As soon as the Doctor let go, she shook out that wing, tears biting at the back of her eyes at how slow her wing had been to move. Obligingly, she angled the other wing to the Doctor and waited with bated breath as he did the same.

“There! Can you flap them now?”

Donna tried, but all her wings accomplished was a pitiful twitch.

“It’s alright, it’ll fade on its own, Donna.” And those same hands were now stroking down her wings, straightening with brisk efficiency any ruffled feathers, as if he’d done it a hundred times before. The sense of touch was slow to come, but the feeling of someone willingly preening her was…freeing.

Donna didn’t want to dwell on whatever the hell that meant. There were more important things to—the Ood!

As if on cue, Donna and the Doctor both said, “The Ood!”

Heads whipped around to stare at the three Ood that freed them, but they were gone.

“We need to—”

“Can you fly?” The Doctor asked, already heading for the exit.

“I—no, I don’t think s—”

“Then we’ll run after them. Donna?”

The Doctor’s hand was outstretched. Donna smiled, took it, and together they raced into the chaos.


End file.
